Wine Gums cake

Hello cake fans! Sorry it's been a while. I have been making cakes, but not photographing them- I'm awful! Hopefully this will make up for it a little. I don't know if you can get this sweets worldwide, but here in the UK we have these sweeties called Wine Gums. They don't have wine in them, never have, they're just fruity but have names of different wines on each chewy sweet. Look at the photo I posted at the beginning of this post and see the wiki here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wine_gum

Anyway. We got a request for a Wine Gums 30th birthday cake! So, as ever, my MIL was on baking and cake covering duties, and I had the task of making a bag of Wine Gums out of icing!

Below is step one. The bag. Covered in icing sugar still in places. I pondered how to let it dry in the right shape to put the sweets in, but then realised I should just shove the actual Wine Gums in there for it to dry around! No point in making the sweets out of icing. It would be tricky to get the jelly effect right, and sweets are edible, and go nicely with cake anyway, so why the hell not??

This is step two. I hand painted a logo exactly like the bag of sweets I had next to me. It was quite laborious, but worth it. There's a lot of shine on this photo as it's still wet.
And here is the finished Wine Gums packet, next to the REAL bag. I'm annoyed with myself as I know there's one sweet I forgot to paint on the packet.... I don't think anybody else cared. I even painted the tiny box in the bottom right corner that says "175 calories" Hee! The colours are

relatively true in this photo (my husband took this photo on his phone and it's better than mine)

And finally... the cake itself! I just handed over the bag I made to my mother in law, and she did everything else. The little glasses of red stuff I am told are jelly (or jello to you Americans) I thought they might be some sickly sweet alcoholic shot, but thankfully not! The tiers are a much deeper, brighter colour than the photo shows. Bright orange, lime green and luminous yellow to go with the sweeties!

In my personal opinion, I thought there were too many Wine Gums on the side of the tiers of cake. Obviously more than would fit in the bag, but artistic licence allows a few more. I just think it's a little overkill, but apparently there were bags of Wine Gums EVERYWHERE at the party, so perhaps it's not too many! What do you think?

Bird cake

Well I promised I'd post it, and thankfully I'm actually really pleased with the outcome!

I hand painted the design using dust colours and gin and an itty bitty paintbrush, and the leaves, flowers and lettering are all from cutters. I dusted the flowers with some iridescent dust and then added edible glitter to the centres. The letters were from a ready mixed brown icing I bought (cop out, sorry!) and the leaves were made from the same stuff, but I put some dust colour and gin over the top in a darker brown, then wiped off the excess so it left the colour in the veins. Very simple and effective. Once it was all painted on, I also added edible glitter to the centre of the tail feathers and the wings on the birds.

Don't ask me what type of birds they are (like my dad did!) they jut came from my head. The whole design was from my head. They're probably like something else I've seen in the past, but I just did some sketches in preparation and this is what I came up with.

Overall it came out very well. It's not the flattest cake ever, but I don't care. I put a lot of love into that cake for my mum :)

Super husband has made a video again. YAY! I should make him do this for all cakes from now on.

Cake in progress

I'm currently in the process of making a cake for my mum's birthday, and I'm nervous because this is the first cake I'll do 100% start to finish! I've baked them and they're cooling ready to sandwich later, hopefully, then I'll have to ice it with no assistance! I may have to rope in my husband as a second pair of hands to flat-ice it.

I have several plans for how it will be decorated in case of disaster (some cover up more flaws than others!!) so I'm not disclosing any design ideas yet! Luckily it's a gift and my idea, so I'm not working to any brief bar my own, so if it all goes rubbish, I'll throw a load of edible glitter at it and pretend it was meant to be that way!

Watch this space, I promise to post pictures even if it's awful...

Cat cakes

Sorry, I've been a bit dreadful with updates on here. I have been making the cakes- just not always documenting them on here. I mentioned on my profile on Blogspot, but not in this blog itself, but I have fibromyalgia which is a chronic pain condition that makes me very, very tired amongst other things. (for more information check out http://www.fibromyalgia-associationuk.org/ ) This means that sometimes making cakes is impossible, as is updating my blog, and sometimes it's all I can do just to get out of bed. Sounds like an excuse, but yes. I will update as and when!

Right. This cake was made for a very good friend of mine, Becky, who, like me, is a crazy cat lady. We missed her birthday as we were all away celebrating my brother in law's wedding, so this cake was done later for Birthday Version 2 (yes we're nerdy)

I carved this cat out of chocolate cake, sandwiched with chocolate buttercream, and then added all the details in normal icing, apart from the whiskers which are wire, and the feathers, which are, err, feathers. Oh and the candle is real!

Look! Around the back there is a ball of wool and a mouse (my MIL made those and marbled the icing, the whole of the rest of the cake is all my handiwork!)

*Burp!*

While I'm at it, I don't think I posted this cat cake either! This was made as a silly fun cake for one of my Mother In Law's friends who was having a civil partnership. We made her proper wedding cake, and then this silly fun cat cake just for fun. Apparently she put it out at the wedding reception! We would have taken more time over it if we knew it would be on display...

Here's some of the cats drying on my icing mat..

And that, cake fans, is it for today. I have more cakes to show you, but I'm tired now. I hope you enjoy them.

Faerie Cake

Time for more cakes! I'm still getting through cake photos backlog. It's a good job I don't have any cakes to make this week. It's very hot here at the moment and the sugarpaste would just melt into a gloopy mess and go all 'orrible.

Here's a Faerie Cake... goes with the blog name! I was actually rather cross with this cake because the faerie's legs and hands and things kept falling off, but most cracks and things got covered with butterflies. I don't think anyone else noticed- but I knew it and it made me really, really cross.
It was a little girl's first birthday cake.

Edible glitter is the BEST THING EVER by the way. Sorry the pictures are so dreadful.. I've said before that my old photos are on poor phone cameras but the new cakes are all taken with much better photos, I promise!

Retro gaming cakes

Still getting through cake backlog! So here's some gaming cakes!

First of all here's one I did for my brother's birthday based on the game Lemmings (see the Wiki here)You'll be pleased to know that the background is moldable chocolate (Cocoform)

Normal problem with the camera not liking small things I'm afraid (I do have a better camera nowadays!)

Secondly here's a cake I had no part in, my MIL made it for my husband (her son) for his birthday and I couldn't get away to do it as a surprise.. but it was my idea to make it a Pacman cake so that kind of counts right? I always get annoyed by the sideways ghost in it.. I'm sure they never do that in the game!

Next post I will show you our first and only divorce cake so far which was so much fun it should be illegal.

Mad Hatter's Tea Party!

My friend's birthday was last week, and she told me she was having a Mad Hatter's Tea Party for her party, so I told her to pick a cake flavour, and I would do the rest! I've had to put off taking photos and blogging about it until after her party yesterday so I didn't spoil the surprise!

It's three layers of chocolate sponge cake with chocolate butter cream, and the top tier is carved to the shape of the hat. As you can see, it's a bastardisation of both the cartoon and the more recent Alice in Wonderland film.

What's that round the back? A caterpillar with a tiny monocle you say?

And a melting Dali-esque pocket watch, and hearts on wires coming at your face...

My Mother In Law also made cupcakes to go with it, but I can't say I made these, I'm afraid, she did it all, but I think they're stunning. (Sadly the chocolate ganache ones got a little squashed on the journey to the party)

Pig Cake

So here's the pig cake in all it's glory! I made all the pigs then my MIL picked them up from my house, and put them on a cake she made herself. The 'mud' is melted chocolate.

I was rather proud of the pigs I have to say. I'm told that my mother in law is hoping to encourage more people to have cakes with animals on so I can make them. I think she's trying to make me do all the work. Heh.

Muddy little piggies!

Sugar flowers

For my first real post on here, I'd like to focus on sugar flowers. It is something I particularly enjoy making because there is a real challenge involved, and there's a true sense of satisfaction when they're completed. Dusting on the colours to make the petals look real is time consuming, but makes such a difference. To make just one flower can take HOURS (depending on the type) and you have to wait for the sugar-paste to dry before attempting to colour it.

My first example is this gerbera wedding cake. This was so frustrating to make as we had to make a LOT of gerberas to fill the space between the tiers, and they were so brittle as well and we had many casualties on the way!

Another flower that has been popular amongst wedding cakes and birthday cakes alike is the orchid. It's a beautiful flower, but harder to make, as the petals are different shapes, and each need wiring separately, but I really get to go wild with the colouring!

Chocolate roses! I will admit I didn't make these- my MIL did them all without me, but I have to include them because I think they look STUNNING. This was done using Cocoform and real edible gold leaf.

Finally, for this post, we have the chrysanthemum. This cake was for my Gran's 89th birthday. She had been quite unwell, and wanted to make a big do about her birthday "in case she didn't make it to the next one". I'm pleased to say she's still doing well, and I'm hoping to do a 90th cake for her later this year! This cake was covered with all my Gran's favourite things- British Wildlife and her favourite flower, bronze Crysanthemums.

I hope you enjoyed my first instalment here on Faerie Kakes. If you have any questions, comments or suggestions of what you'd like to see here, I'd love to here from you. I might even include some step by step guides at some point if you ask me nicely :)